Gorgon
In Greek mythology, the Gorgons ("terrible" or, according to some, "loud-roaring") were vicious female monsters with sharp fangs and hair of living, venomous snakes. In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek: Μέδουσα, Médousa, "guardian, protectress"[1]), was a monstrous chthonic female character, essentially an extension of an apotropaic mask, gazing upon whom could turn onlookers to stone. Secondarily, Medusa was tripled into a trio of sisters, the Gorgons.
Origins
The concept of the gorgon is at least as old in mythology as Perseus and Zeus. The name is Greek, being from gorgos, "terrible." There are a few cognates: Old Irish garg, "wild," Armenian karcr, "hard." Hoffman's suggested root is *gragnis; Émile Boisacq's, *greg-. The root would not be a commonly used one.
The name of the most senior "terrible one," Medusa, is better Greek, being the feminine present participle of medein, "to rule over." The masculine, Medon, "ruler," is a Homeric name. The Indo-European root, *me-, "measure," generates a large number of words.
The name of "queen" and the magical powers indicate Medusa was a bronze-age deity, and yet deities are not beheaded by mortals and terrible ones are not really terrible if they ward away enemies. The snakes are reminiscent of the Cretan snake goddess. It is possible that the story represents the subordination of a pre-Greek religious infrastructure by new Greek superstructures able to attribute the power of life and death to themselves.
On the other hand, Marija Gimbutas ("Language of the Goddess") believed she saw the prototype of the Gorgoneion in Neolithic art motifs, especially in anthropomorphic vases and terra cotta masks inlaid with gold. The gorgon descends from the pre-Indo-European goddess of life and death, represented in various forms, of which the Gorgoneion is one.
The motif is an accretion of motifs. The large eyes, as well as Athena's flashing eyes, are a symbol termed "the divine eyes" by Gimbutas (who did not originate the perception), appearing also in Athena's bird, the owl. They can be represented by spirals, wheels, concentric circles, and other ways. They radiate the sun's rays and weep the spring rains.
Snakes also possess the eyes. The fangs of the gorgoneion are snakes' fangs. Snakes are a symbol of appeasement and increase. The round face is the moon. Sometimes Gorgoneia are endowed with birds' feet or bee wings, more symbols of regeneration. The mouth is open so that streams may flow from it. The lolling tongue is a symbol of death.
It cannot be said that these motifs belong exclusively to the European Neolithic and not to the Indo-Europeans. They appear among the Celts and Germans as well. The Balts kept snakes as household pets. As Gimbutas points out, masks with staring eyes are portrayed in Paleolithic cave art. Very likely, the goddess precedes any Indo-European/non-Indo-European distinction.
At Mycenae, traces of the ancient religion are found in elements considered characteristically Greek. A tholos tomb, there or elsewhere, is a symbol of the uterus. Solar discs studded the walls of some. The "death masks" of the shaft graves should probably more aptly be called life masks. In Paleolithic art, the dancer, who puts on a reindeer head with staring eyes, very likely became the reindeer in the dance. Similarly, a masked corpse overcame death by putting on the mask of life, a different concept from our death mask.
Gimbutas cites Gorgoneia with bees' heads on some classical Attic pottery and with bees'heads, snake heads or owl faces on some Cycladic pottery. She regards them as transitional between the ancient and classical Gorgoneia. As for the name, it is not from a solid Indo-European root. It could have been from a more ancient language, or could have translated a word in another language.
In Greek myth, only Perseus and Zeus (through Athena) own the Gorgoneion. The two must be tied together in some way; that is, the king of Mycenae was the earthly counterpart of Zeus from whom he derived his authority. The Iliad clearly expresses this divine right of bronze-age kings, which the wrath of Achilles undermined. By assuming the Gorgoneion, Perseus put on as a mask the power of life and death personified by Medusa, the cosmic queen. Some classical references multiply her[2] into three Gorgon sisters: Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale, monsters with goggling eyes, sharp protruding fangs and lolling tongues, brass hands, and hair of living, venomous snakes. The Gorgons were children of Phorcys and Ceto, or sometimes, Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graiae, as in Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound, who places both trinities of sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":
- "Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
- With snakes for hair— hated of mortal man—" File:PerseusSignoriaStatue.jpgPerseus with the Head of Medusa, by Benvenuto Cellini.
While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the later fifth century began to envisage her as a being beautiful as well as terrifying. In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a beautiful nymph , but when she had intercourse with Poseidon in Athena's temple, the goddess transformed her hair to serpents and she made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone.
In all the versions, while Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, she was beheaded in her sleep by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus. With help from Athena and Hermes, who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, a sickle, and a mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest. The hero slew Medusa by looking at her reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned into stone. When the hero severed Medusa's head, from her neck two offspring sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became the hero wielding the golden sword. Jane Ellen Harrison notes that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended ... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood." (Harrison 1922:187). In Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa,
- "lest for my daring Persephone the dread
- From Hades should send up an awful monster's grizzly head"
in the translation of Jane Ellen Harrison, who notes "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon (Harrison 1922: 187, note 3).
According to Ovid Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas in North-West Africa who stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone. The story was an aetiological myth describing origins of the Atlas Mountains. In a similar manner, the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore. Furthermore the poisonous vipers of the Sahara, in the Argonautica, were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood.
Perseus then flew to his mother's island where she was about to be forced into marriage with the king. He cried out "Mother, shield your eyes," and everyone but his mother was turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa's head.
Then he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis. Some say the goddess gave Medusa's magical blood to the physician Asclepius, some of which was a deadly poison and the other had the power to raise the dead.
Classical tradition
Gorgons are sometimes depicted as having wings of gold, brazen claws, and the tusks of boars. According to the myths, seeing the face of a Gorgon turned the viewer to stone.
Homer speaks of only one Gorgon, whose head is represented in the Iliad as fixed in the center of the aegis of Zeus:
- "About her shoulders she flung the tasselled aegis, fraught with terror...and therein is the head of the dread monster, the Gorgon, dread and awful, a portent of Zeus that beareth the aegis."(5.735ff)
Its earthly counterpart is a device on the shield of Agamemnon:
- "...and therein was set as a crown the Gorgon, grim of aspect, glaring terribly, and about her were Terror and Rout."(11.35ff)
In the Odyssey, she is a monster of the underworld:
- "...and pale fear seized me, lest august Persephone might send forth upon me from out of the house of Hades the head of the Gorgon, that awful monster..."(11.635)
Hesiod (Theogony, Shield of Heracles) increases the number of Gorgons to three—Stheno (the mighty), Euryale (the far-springer) and Medusa (the queen), and makes them the daughters of the sea-god Phorcys and of Keto. Their home is on the farthest side of the western ocean; according to later authorities, in Libya. The Attic tradition, reproduced in Euripides (Ion), regarded the Gorgon as a monster, produced by Gaia to aid her sons the giants against the gods and slain by Athena. Of the three Gorgons, only Medusa is mortal.
According to Ovid (Metamorphoses), Medusa alone had serpents in her hair, and this was due to Athena (Roman Minerva) cursing her. Medusa had copulated with Poseidon (Roman Neptune), who was aroused by the golden color of Medusa's hair, in a temple of Athena. Athena therefore changed the enticing golden locks into serpents. Aeschylus says that the three Gorgons had only one tooth and one eye between them (see also the Graeae), which they had to swap between themselves.
Other sources claim that each of three Gorgon sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, had snakes for hair, and had the power to turn anyone who looked at them to stone. Apollodorus (11.2.6, 2.4.1, 22.4.2) provides a good summary of the Gorgon myth, while Pausanias (5.10.4, 8.47.5, many other places) supplies the details of where and how the Gorgons were represented in Greek art and architecture.
Perseus and Medusa
Medusa was the only one of the three who was mortal; hence Perseus was able to kill her by cutting off her head while looking at her in the reflection in a mirrored shield he got from the Graeae. Some authors say that Perseus was armed with a scythe by Hermes (Mercury) and a mirror by Athena (Minerva). Whether the mirrored shield or the scythe, these weapons allowed him to defeat Medusa easily. From the blood that spurted from her neck sprang Chrysaor and Pegasus (other sources say that each drop of blood became a snake), her two sons by Poseidon. He gave the head, which had the power of turning into stone all who looked upon it, to Athena, who placed it in her shield; according to another account, Perseus buried it in the marketplace of Argos.
Protective and healing powers
In Ancient Greece a Gorgoneion (or stone head, engraving or drawing of a Gorgon face, often with snakes protruding wildly and tongue sticking out between the fangs) was frequently used as an Apotropaic symbol and placed on doors, walls, coins, shields, breastplates, and tombstones in the hopes of warding off evil. In this regard Gorgoneia are similar to the sometimes grotesque faces on Chinese soldiers’ shields, also used generally as an amulet, a protection against the evil eye. In some cruder representations, the blood flowing under the head can be mistaken for a beard.
In Greek mythology, blood taken from the right side of a Gorgon could bring the dead back to life, yet blood taken from the left side was an instantly fatal poison. Athena gave a vial of the healing blood to Asclepius, which ultimately brought about his demise.
Heracles is said to have obtained a lock of Medusa’s hair (which possessed the same powers as the head) from Athena and given it to Sterope, the daughter of Cepheus, as a protection for the town of Tegea against attack.
According to the later idea of Medusa as a beautiful maiden, whose hair had been changed into snakes by Athena, the head was represented in works of art with a wonderfully handsome face, wrapped in the calm repose of death.
Medusa in art and legend
Medusa is a well-known mythological icon throughout the world, having been portrayed in works of art as well as popular media over the ages.
Examples of Medusa and the Perseus legend in the arts:
- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Leonardo da Vinci;
- Perseus with the Head of Medusa (bronze sculpture) by Benvenuto Cellini (1554);
- Perseus with the Head of Medusa (marble sculpture) by Antonio Canova (1801);
- Perseus (bronze sculpture) by Salvador Dalí;
- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Arnold Böcklin
- Medusa (oil on canvas) by Caravaggio.
Gorgons in modern culture
Like cyclops, harpies, and other beasts of Greek mythology, gorgons have been popularized in modern times by the fantasy genre such as in books, comics, role-playing games, and video games. Although not as well known as dragons or unicorns, most popular lore concerning gorgons derives from Medusa and the Perseus legend. Images of gorgons and Medusa are commonly mistaken to be the same. According to most of the original Greek myths, Medusa was the only one of the Gorgon sisters to be beautiful; the others being hideous beasts. Over time, however, and possibly even in their original day, both gorgons and Medusa came to be seen as evil monsters.
Notes
- ↑ The verb medein "to protect, rule over," has given the name of another dangerous protectress, Medea.
- ↑ "The triple form is not primitive, it is merely an instance of a general tendency... which makes of each woman goddess a trinity, which has given us the Horae, the Charites, the Semnai, and a host of other triple groups. It is immediately obvious that the Gorgons are not really three but one + two. The two unslain sisters are mere appendages due to custom; the real Gorgon is Medusa " (Harrison 1903:187).
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Jane Ellen Harrison, (1903) 3rd ed. 1922. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,: "The Ker as Gorgon"
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Additional material has been added from the 1824 Lempriere's Dictionary.
External links
- Theoi Project, Medousa & the Gorgones References to Medusa and her sisters in classical literature and art
- Medusa in Myth and Literary History
- On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Medusa Coins Ancient coins depicting Medusa
- Women in Antiquity An Essay on Medusa
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